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Best Places in Britain to Bring Up a Family We listened to the experts—parents themselves By the Editors Click Here to see how your area rates  Best Places to Bring Up a Family full results Where's the best place to bring up a family? To find out, Reader's Digest polled parents across the country about factors affecting family life.
They told us their most important requirements for a family-friendly area: good state schools, a low crime rate, good local hospitals, affordable family housing and high employment. Then came low flood risk, plenty of other families nearby and local colleges and universities. (See What Do Parents Care About? at end of article.)
These factors were weighted, based on the importance that parents gave them. Then they were measured against statistical and demographic portraits of all 408 local authority areas in England, Scotland and Wales. Using measurable, authoritative data-such as Home Office crime figures, unemployment rates from the Office for National Statistics and Land Registry house price figures-we ranked each area.
The areas we compared include cities, small towns and rural districts. None is without problems. But areas that achieved high overall scores in our survey are those that can provide what parents want most for their families. See end of article for a downloadable list of the areas we surveyed.
The top ten areas may surprise you. Scotland has no fewer than three winners-including first and second-thanks largely to its good schools and affordable housing, while just one Welsh winner makes it into the top ten. Smaller is beautiful, says the survey. The winning areas are predominantly rural, peppered with small country towns-only three include towns with populations greater than 40,000. Britain's inner cities fare badly, with Newcastle Upon Tyne the highest scorer in 180th place, Liverpool 287th, Manchester 328th and three London boroughs in the bottom ten.
After analysing the survey data, we sent an editorial team out to a town in each of the top ten areas to hear from local parents themselves. We found that if a single thread runs through the fabric of all these places, large and small, it is the golden one called “community”-the concerned neighbours, teachers and community groups that stand behind safe streets, strong schools and thriving towns. Here's a closer look: Page 1 of 7 |
